Those are code words, Governor

Commentary

RICK CASEY, Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Friday, April 17, 2009

Poor Rick Perry! He got his knickers so bunched up while speaking at the Austin Tea Party on Wednesday he not only raised the possibility Texas would secede from the Union, he suggested that we gained the right to do so when we became a state in 1845.

Here is his actual quote, spoken to a group of reporters after the governor’s appearance at a Tea Party in Austin and caught on tape by my colleague R.G. Ratcliffe:

“Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that,” Perry said. “My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.”

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I have to think the professors at Texas A&M taught Perry better than that. The federal act that admitted Texas to the Union did not give the state permission to secede. We all know what happened when Texas did just that.

On the contrary, the law granting statehood provided that Texas could split itself into as many as five states.

Garner wanted a split

In 1921 the New York Times carried a lengthy interview with Texas Congressman John Nance Garner, seriously proposing that the state do just that. Garner was a political heavyweight. Already dean of the Texas delegation, he would become speaker of the House in 1931 and FDR’s first vice president a year later.

Garner argued that since Texas was twice as big as all of New England, it shouldn’t be outvoted in the Senate by that region by a margin of 12-2. He also argued that though New England was a third more populous than Texas, the Lone Star State, “the day is not far distant when Texas will be the third State in the Union, with New York and Pennsylvania in first and second place, respectively.” Garner repeated the call in 1930, when he was Democratic House leader.

But the language specifically authorizing Texas to divide and multiply was not in consideration of the state’s size. It was to provide an easy way to produce new slave states to balance the Senate if northern territories became free states.

Perry’s slender grasp on history was exposed during the angry speech he delivered minutes before his secession remark.

He quoted our “seventh governor, Sam Houston,” as saying: “Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may!”

But Perry, with secession apparently on his mind, neglected to note that as governor Houston bitterly opposed Texas’s secession from the Union, and was booted from office when he refused to sign a loyalty oath to the Confederacy.

Perry again showed his lack of regard for the not-so-subtle nuances of history when he expressed his anger at the federal government by chopping the air with his fist and chanting: “I’m talking about states’ rights, states’ rights, states’ rights!”

He said the constitutional protection of states’ rights unfortunately “have melted away over time.”

An ugly history

The crowd loved it, but there is a large segment of Texas citizens who know bitterly that the term “states’ rights” was long militantly employed to fight the melting away of such “rights” as state sanctioning of slavery, enforcement of school segregation and, in Texas, the definition of political parties as private associations permitted to exclude non-whites primaries.

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There are certain rights of states that deserve to be protected, but a politician who wants to be leader of all the people doesn’t use terms so tightly bound to such an ugly history.